Boundary – The Great Bear Rain Forest is an experience of tree covered ranges immersed in the coastal waters of northwestern British Columbia. A seafaring vessel allows you to sail through the fjords and islands – but much of the environment lays below – hidden to the traveler until the tides expose the landforms or aquatic based life comes into our world. It is a boundary, below us where life takes on a different element.

From our perspective, we cannot see the other side. Where the Humpback whales, marine mammals, air breathers like us, spend their lives until they break through the surface into our world. Breaking the plane with an explosion of breath, spraying fountains of the deep into the air. Filling their lungs until, with an arched back they use their powerful flukes to dive again and disappear below.

We lay on top of the water in boats, searching the horizon, reflecting as we wait. Anticipating. We watch a flock of seagulls. Suddenly they lift off the water as the great behemoth whales, 16 meters long (48-50 feet) weighing 36,000 Kilograms (80,000 pounds) breach, their mouths expanded, full of their weight in water, brimming with herring, to be strained and swallowed.

This act of feeding reflects a world that lies below. The whales working together to feed, blowing bubbles to form a curtain of air, a bubble net corralling the herring into a concentrated mass. Then the group lunges upwards through the rich waters to have their fill. And then they dive again.
You wait. You spend time in the moment, wondering where you will see them as you scan the horizon, listening for that unique sound expelling the watery depth into the air, looking for the telltale spray – to realize you are present in the moment.

The engines of the boat are cut off. Then you realize they see you too. They too are curious. You float with them. They reflect upon what you are. Their muzzles drift just meters from you, looking up as you are lost in thought looking at them, simply wondering about each other. You see they have whiskers, barnacles and sea creatures living on them. You see their scrapes, their unique dorsal fins, and their individually unique flukes. You become part of their world. They see you. What reflection do they take with them about these creatures so fascinated about you as you are of them?

They share the waters with the resident Steller Sea lions, who appear content to ply the same abundant fjords and water. Making you think about all the connected pieces of life that bring them to this place. The Sea Lions climb the rocks left behind from when all of this was buried under continental ice sheet, to rest, to take in the warmth of the reflected sun.

A boundary that seems to separate, yet connects us into their world, we see only the reflection of what they bring to us.